To achieve professional success, women must
find a way to exhibit the agentic traits that
people expect from a leader, balanced with
the communal traits that people expect from a
woman. The authors provide practical advice
for communication and impression management as well as how to handle potentially
difficult situations, such as accepting feedback and criticism, advocating for yourself,
and holding your own in meetings. Though
it is targeted to women, men who are interested in helping achieve workplace equity
have much to gain by reading this guide, as
it may open their eyes and give them some
tools for challenging bias. In addition to providing intelligent guidance, it reminds us all
that we have a long way to go when it comes
to achieving gender equality in the workplace.
—Nanette Donohue

The Inevitable: Understanding the 12Technological Forces That Will ShapeOur Future.

By Kevin Kelly.

June 2016. 336p. Viking, $28 (9780525428084). 303.

Looking decades into the future, Kelly (What
Technology Wants, 2010) sees 12 technological
trends that will (or already do) affect every
aspect of our app-ified lives: becoming, cog-nifying, flowing, screening, accessing, sharing,
filtering, remixing, interacting, tracking, questioning, and beginning. Artificial intelligence
is a common theme throughout; Kelly predicts
AI will be Google’s main product by 2026, and
will help humanity most by defining what jobs
can and cannot be done by robots. Kelly argues
the unlikely success of Wikipedia and its mixing of bottom-up collaboration with a small
but high-minded hierarchy provides a model
for “social production” in future platforms and
services—the most successful of which will
focus on access over ownership (think Netflix
versus DVDs) and “flows” over fixity (e.g., e-books versus print books). Though insisting
his predictions are trajectories rather than des-tinies, Kelly’s zealous futurism and occasional
oversimplifications provide plenty of fodder for disagreement and even philosophical
pondering. But he never gets too wonky, and
rightly argues for a “vigilant, eyes-wide-open”
approach to new technologies rather than
prohibition, declaring: “Before we say, ‘
Impossible!’ I say: Let’s see.” —Chad Comello

Science

And Soon I Heard a Roaring Wind: ANatural History of Moving Air.

By Bill Streever.

July 2016. 320p. Little, Brown, $26 (9780316410601).
551.5.

After minimal training, science writerStreever (Heat, 2013; Cold, 2009) and hiswife, “rank amateurs foolish enough to havepurchased a sailboat,” set off on the Rocitaine,where Streever intends to learn about the windfirsthand. As he experiences the wind (bothfoul and fair), he considers the long historybe bred out of people. Somewhere along theway, though, not everyone got the memo, andthe stigma of coming from “white trash” stillexists—American exceptionalism be damned.Turning to the present day, Isenberg coverseverything from Bill Clinton to country-boyculture to the rise of redneck reality TV. Thehistory here can sometimes be dense, but theauthor delivers a thought-provoking discourseon an important social issue. —Rebecca Vnuk

Witness to the Revolution: Radicals,Resisters, Vets, Hippies, and the YearAmerica Lost Its Mind and Found ItsSoul.

By Clara Bingham.

June 2016. 656p. illus. Random, $30 (9780812993189).

303.48.

Vietnam, domestic bombings, marches,student strikes, political trials, Nixon, and thecounterculture dominated U.S. news betweenAugust 1969 and September 1970. FormerWhite House correspondent for Newsweek,Bingham (Class Action: The Landmark CaseThat Changed Sexual Harassment Law, 2002)captures the essence of these 14 monthsthrough the words of movement organiz-ers, vets, students, draft resisters, journalists,musicians, government agents, writers, andothers. Distilled from 100 interviews, thesefirsthand narratives—from Bill Ayers, Ber-nadette Dohrn, Daniel Ellsberg, and manymore—paint a picture of life during the apexof anti-war, anti-government movements.Organized around major events, the storiesare interspersed with striking photographsand government documents from the WhiteHouse, FBI, and other federal offices. The in-dividuals Bingham features led a seismic shiftin American culture and politics that continuesto resonate today. This oral history will enablereaders to see that era in a new light and withfresh sympathy for the motivations of thoseinvolved. While Bingham’s is one of many ret-rospective looks at that period, it is one of themost immediate and personal. —Dan KaplanYA/C: Invaluable for students studyingpolitical movements of the 1960s,thanks to the thematic organization andpersonal recollections by individuals nowsynonymous with the era. DK.

Writings on the Wall: Searching for aNew Equality beyond Black and White.By Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and RaymondObstfeld.

Aug. 2016. 256p. Time/Liberty Street, $27.95
(9781618931719). 305.

Abdul-Jabbar hopes that this collection of essays written in the vein of his Time magazine
pieces will contribute to the national debate
underway this voluble election year. To that
end, he is unflinchingly candid in his take on
politics, including the current presidential race,
implicit and explicit racism, religion (especially
the demonization of Muslims), gender equality, class struggle, sports, and the media. In his
closing chapter, “Dear Generation Z: Unsolicited Advice for Future Americans,” he seeks
to illuminate (with coauthor Obstfeld) these
topics with a combination of statistics and
personal experiences bolstered by numerous
pop-culture references and quotes from historical figures, and provides possible solutions.
While much of this is well-explored territory, Abdul-Jabbar makes valid points on the
relatively unexamined topic of the negatively
stereotypical images of the elderly in film and
television, and advocates for older Americans
to unite and turn their ever-growing demographic into genuine consumer and political
power. Ultimately, this is a call to everyone in
the U.S. to live better, richer, fuller lives, which
is, after all, the real definition of the American
Dream. —Valerie Hawkins

Business

Breaking through Bias:Communication Techniques forWomen to Succeed at Work.By Andrea S. Kramer and Alton B. Harris.June 2016. 256p. Bibliomotion, $27.95(9781629561042); e-book (9781629561059). 650.101.Attorneys Kramer and Harris draw ontheir extensive experiencein this thoughtful guide toworkplace communication.No time is spent debatingwhether gender bias ex-ists in the workplace; theauthors cite the relevant sta-tistics and proceed into theirdiscussion of gender stereo-types and how to combat them. Central totheir technique is the expectation that womenbehave in a manner that is communal, seekingconsensus and acceptance; and men behave ina manner that is agentic, seeking success andpromotion—but when a woman behaves thatway, she’s derided as self-serving or aggressive.

• Adult titles recommended for teens are
marked with the following symbols: YA,
for books of general YA interest; YA/C,
for books with particular curriculum
value; YA/S, for books that will appeal
most to teens with a special interest in
a specific subject; and YA/M, for books
best suited to mature teens.